Five items you need for your fitness regime

In order to keep yourself motivated when trying to get fitter, here are five items I’ve bought to keep me motivated and to improve my fitness and what you can buy too all at a reasonable cost…

Since just before Christmas, I’ve had a real slump with exercising. This hasn’t been entirely been my fault as when you have a broken boiler and no heating/hot water, exercising and getting all hot and sweaty is the last thought on your mind! Unfortunately, I sunk into this slump of not wanting to do anything and manage to gain half a stone in that time which has started making me feel down about my body image again.

Before Christmas I had actually gotten to a point where I was starting to like my figure again and to now have gained weight again is literally taking a step back. In light of this, I’ve decided my new fitness regime is starting from February and to get myself back into this habit, I’ve bought myself a few bits to give me that extra motivation to actually get my arse in gear!

Shoes

Last November, I somehow managed to tear a ligament in one of my toes resulting in any exercise being incredibly painful! At Christmas, I was talking to my sister about her Skechers that are designed to create comfort for your feet. The company is branded as a lifestyle and performance style brand offering athletic and casual style footwear for men, women, and children of all ages and sizes. You can buy Skechers in most shoe shops so I had a hunt around on the internet to see what I could buy and that wasn’t too expensive.

I discovered the online store Shoefish that offers discounts on branded shoes. Despite never having heard of them before, I decided to take the plunge and purchase a pair of Skechers and I was not disappointed. After having placed my order the shoes arrived within 48 hours. The shoes also do not disappoint. No longer does my torn ligament hurt when exercising and my feet feel like they constantly walking on cotton wool! The shoes also fit perfectly and make exercising that bit more bearable. Trust me, you won’t regret investing in a pair of these bad boys!

Fitness tracker

Whether you decide to go for a Fitbit or a Jawbone UP or any other one of the multitude of fitness trackers out there, having one of these can make exercise that little bit more fun. I only have a Jawbone UP 2 so it doesn’t include all the fancy gadgets like telling the time or what type of sleep I got last night but it does keep a track of my fitness and how many hours sleep I got.

With the app you can download from the app store it connects to your phone and can tell you how many steps you’ve taken that day and for how long you’ve been idle for. I can also record what I’ve eaten and how many calories I’ve burnt from using my brain or from exercising. Despite not being able to do all the fancy things with it I like creating competitions with myself to see if I can beat my daily steps from the previous day or how many I can achieve in a week.

Gym clothes

Although (as long as it’s sensible of course) it shouldn’t really matter what you wear to the gym but to try and get out of those sluggish “I can’t be arsed with this” phase, buying a new pair of gym clothes can give you that bit of motivation to hit the gym. I recently bought some new gym leggings and a hoodie from Asda for about £10 each. Not only do they make me feel super sassy but they are comfy and of good quality so for around £20 for a new outfit it isn’t too badly priced either.

Headphones

Having a decent pair of headphones can make exercising that little bit more fun and make you feel more pumped/getting hyped into that exercise regime. Well, I do anyway. Being completely honest, I quite often tend to use whichever headphones I can find around the house but sometimes I pinch Greg’s gaming headphones.

My God the quality of those babies!

They have noise reduction so you literally cannot hear anything around you which is great when you just want to zone out into your routine and listening to a few of your favourite tunes can make that 20 – 30-minute workout fly by! I like listening to 80’s New Wave or dance tunes from when I was at uni or creating a random playlist with anything that’s a bit upbeat and makes me want to get my body moving.

Water bottle

If I’m being completely honest then this is something I haven’t upgraded in a while which is bad, I know! Something for next payday maybe? Anyway, when working out I always like to keep a water bottle on me as having a bottle of refreshing cold water is quite satisfying either during or at the end of a workout. One of these bottles holds a litre of water and has a carbon filter in the lid so all you need to do is keep refilling it with water and it filters it all for you. I tend to give it a quick rinse out in between uses though. You can also buy 500ml bottles and the filter lasts for around three months. As you can probably tell just by looking at my bottle it has seen better days as I have had it for around two years!